Sophia Al-Maria’s debut "The Girl Who Fell to Earth" is the story of her redneck family in Washington State and her Bedouin family in Qatar.  Beginning with two runaways in Norway and Saudi Arabia whose rebellion  over a century ago made the unlikely meeting and marriage of her parents  possible, The Girl Who Fell to Earth plots Sophia’s own zigzagging  adventure from a raspberry-farm in Tacoma to a winter-camp outside  Riyadh, from a houseboat in Cairo to the back of a Harley in rural  Norway. Intended as a contradiction in tone and content to the popular  genre-memoirs of the victimized- Muslim-woman, this funny, moving coming  of age story helps us realise that wars might be fought between cultures, but first they start between families. 

“Sophia's unusual upbringing has pushed her to the outer edges of modern identity. She's not so much split between two cultures in a schizoid way -- she's more of a moon that oversees both at the same time: 1980s Washington State working class culture meets Qatari bedouin culture with absolutely no buffering between the two. The book left me with the very rare and highly prized sensation of being communicated to by someone who may, in fact, be alien. I was also left with a visceral impression about bedouin and Arab culture that all the think pieces and weekend magazine pieces can't deliver. This book can easily alter the way you see the early twenty-first century.” 

Douglas Coupland

**********

W sprawie materiałów recenzenckich prosimy o kontakt mailowy z Patrycją Świat pod adresem patrycja@literatura.com.pl